Christof Koch - "Consciousness is not a computation... it's a state of being" - Sentientism Ep:181

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Christof is a neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness on which he worked with Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick for 24 years. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Having originally trained as a physicist, from 1986 until 2013, he was a Professor of Biology and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Southern California.
Over the last decade, Christof has worked closely with the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. Together they advocate for an Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness - often seen as a modern version of panpsychism that only ascribes consciousness to entities with some degree of irreducible cause-effect power.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Clips!
01:09 Welcome
- "My dog... Mr. Felix... a sentient being"
- The dedication from Christof's forthcoming book "Then I Am Myself The World": "... to all fellow travellers on the river of time who howl, bark, cry, screech, whine, bellow, shriek, buzz, sing, speak or those without a voice - for it is only in compassion with all life that we can redeem ourselves."
03:52 Christof's Intro
- Physicist turned neurobiologist
- "I've always been fascinated by the question of #consciousness"
04:45 What's Real
- Growing up in a devout Roman #catholic family, raised kids Catholic
- "One thing that always irked me... the belief that my dogs... somehow didn't have a soul and wouldn't be resurrected... that always bothered me... whatever it is we all share"
- "I lived in two worlds - like many scientists do. On Sunday you go to church and you pray... during the week, the rest of the time, you're a scientist - you try to explain everything using natural explanation... this split... I couldn't support any more"
- "Progressively I lost my faith... I'm a naturalist... I try to explain everything... using natural laws"
- "What's real, the only thing that exists is causal power... that gravity has... that electric charge has... that I have when... I raise one of my hands"
- "... the central aspect which is that I can feel, I have experiences, I can see - all of that is somehow arising out of causal powers"
- A priest acknowledging that non-human animals are "parts of god's creation" and can suffer, but "they do not partake in the same way we do"
- Human exceptionalism "many religions believe that humans are exceptional... we're in charge of the universe... everything gets subsumed under human demands - that struck me as wrong"
- Living in Arabic, muslim-majority countries
- "Who has what faith - it's totally random - it depends where you were born and in which family you were born... how can this be true"
- Doing science, using rational assumptions, Bayesian reasoning, the scientific method
- JW: Topics that draw even some naturalists back towards the mystical: Origins & nature of the universe, life, humanity, consciousness...
- Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" as inspiration for the title of Christof's new book "they lose their own identity and become one... which includes them and the entire world"
- Conversion, mystical, near-death, psychedelic experiences "The question is - what do they reveal about the universe?"
- Leaving Catholicism "it's not easy... there are many things that are very positive about faith... but there are also very negative things... It puts the roots inside of you and it's not easy to leave that comfort... like looking back at the comfort of a childhood... you can't go back... you grew up... now you realise... life is not a consoling tale for children"
- "The universe is beautiful but it's also terrible and it's up to us to understand it... there isn't a god who's going to do that for us"
13:47 What & Who Matters?
- "Morality... the rules and ethics the deeper part, how should we behave, ultimately has to be to minimise the suffering of all creatures... all sentient, conscious creatures... creatures that can experience."
- "Given we're all products of natural selection - we all have pain and can suffer... that's necessary as part of our evolutionary heritage"
39:45 What are Consciousness and Sentience?
01:14:09 A Better World?
01:17:35 Follow Christof
- "I don't Twitter"
- christofkoch.com/
- alleninstitute.org/person/chr...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo...
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes)#sentientism
#sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: / sentientism .

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24 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 40

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

If you prefer audio, here are the links to the Sentientism podcast: 🍎apple.co/391khQO 👂pod.link/1540408008. Ratings, reviews & sharing with friends all appreciated. You're helping normalise "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings" sentientism.info/posts. Everyone is welcome in our online communities - come join us: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente 7 месяцев назад

Is transcript available - maybe of auto-generated subtitles?

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

@@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente I do fairly rich show-notes that summarise the conversation on sentientism.info. Here for this episode: sentientism.info/christof-koch-and-iit-consciousness-is-not-a-computation-its-a-state-of-being-sentientism-ep181. I think you can also turn on auto-transcripts on RU-vid and extract them?

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

I've also just noticed that Spotify is trialling a "read-along" transcript which might help... open.spotify.com/episode/40TheqjbFdmxH8VCzT97vI?si=e5eb1376a6f144f3

@georgebates7862 7 месяцев назад

Another very interesting podcast. In the 1970's there was an interview show on network television called The Dick Cavette Show. Cavette was widely regarded as the smartest, cleverest, most articulate, most personable, most incisive interviewer of celebrities and other notables of that era. I think the torch has been passed to Jaime Woodhouse. A couple of additional questions that I wish could have be asked of Dr. Koch: 1. his views on the Penrose-Hameroff model for consciousness that links quantum phenomena going on at a subcellular level inside neurons with conscious experience, 2. with respect to his corticocentric bias towards mammalian consciousness, how does he explain the obviously conscious behavior of laboratory rats and cats that have been experimentally decorticated, and 3. how does he ethically reconcile the killing of laboratory animals like mice to answer esoteric questions about sentience in the very animals whose lives he has just extinguished? Incidentally, John Sanbonmatsu's eagerly awaited new book, "The Omnivores' Deception", has not yet been published.

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

Thank you George - very kind words! Those are great questions. Wish I'd dug into those areas more. Thanks re: "Omnivore's Deception" - I should have been clearer it's not out yet! Maybe confused myself because I've been lucky enough to read a section of it already.

@SellTheWorld 7 месяцев назад

I love these conversations. Please keep on making them. They are so important.

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

Thank you - you've given me a warm glow! I plan to do just that. Although I wish they reached a much bigger audience. My guests deserve it!

@LouisGedo 7 месяцев назад

Looking forward to this video

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

Thanks Louis - hope you enjoy!

@rwess 6 месяцев назад

Quote: "The Western intellectual tradition suggests that in order to be happy, what we need to do most of all is to go out and subdue the world; secure resources, found businesses, run governments, gain fame and conquer nations. By contrast, the Eastern tradition has for a long while told us something very different. In both its Buddhist and Hindu strands, it has insisted that contentment requires us to learn to conquer not the world but the instrument through which we view this world, namely our minds." The School of Life. - Or, it's merely about conquering your microbiome, your gut bacteria... Most people seem unable... - Or, maybe it's merely about conquering your stupid taste buds... Most people seem unable... 🙃

@rwess 7 месяцев назад

Just starting. - I expect a good one... Meanwhile, The Animal Turn had Gary Francione on. I agree with him a lot, but somehow he also bugs me. My take away: First abolition (as he advocates), then rights, then welfare - just as happened with human chattel slavery (we're still working on the welfare part.). Only veganism, grounded in the sentience of the victims (as he advocates), can achieve abolition... Agreed, but single-issue campaigns (such as fur, leather, wool, civet coffee, etc.) can serve the purpose of educating and enlightening about the massive extent of animal "chattel enslavement" - as long as the clear primary purpose is always abolition (not rights or welfare improvements)! Even PETA, the master of single-issue campaigns, has the motto "Animals are not ours..." which is an abolitionist stance. Gary advocates for a single message and single focus (which is fine), but I think we need to hit on many fronts toward the unified abolitionist end. I agree with him that veganism is the litmus test for any individual, or organization, advocating for sentient beings. I also want to make some distinctions on what abolition means for "domesticated" and "wild" sentient beings, but that's too much content for a RU-vid comment.😁

@JamieWoodhouse 7 месяцев назад

Thanks Roy. Yep - his stance isn't always quite as clearly consistent or crisply bounded as he presents. I criticise "welfarism" too - but prefer to point out that even a minimal concern for the "welfare" of non-human animals is inconsistent with farming or exploiting them. There's a danger that in pointing out the issues with welfarism we reinforce the suggestion that "high welfare"/"humane" animal farming can actually exist. When it's an oxymoron. And while abolishing human use and the treatment of non-human animals as property are important steps - they're not all that's important to sentient beings. Ending human-caused harms is important - but many deep problems will still remain thereafter.

@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente 7 месяцев назад

I would say VEGanism is not sensible and reliable test about advocacy for nondiscrimination between all species of sentient beings! Raw etymologic meaning of term VEGan is not even synchronized with its own definitions(by Vegan Society,...)! which causes most Vegans are, many hidden, Speciests. Term AntiSpeciest is synchronized! and is or should be(but is mostly only declarative) basis for all AntiSpeciests movements however they are called/branded(Vegan, Animal liberation/rights, Sentientism,....)! And is best also as logical and experientially known continuation of Anti-Racism,Nazism, Misogynism,... Now I go watch video 😂😇

@user-ib7jr6uu1b 2 месяца назад

Christof Kock rocks!!

@Sentientism 2 месяца назад

He does indeed - a fascinating mind. I'm so lucky to talk to all these amazing people.

@elliotpolanco159 4 месяца назад

This is profound.

@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente 7 месяцев назад

and video is interrupted by Macdonald's Big Mac ad! By AI?!

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

Maybe the AI is Sentientist and is trying to bankrupt McD's by wasting their ad money on people who will never buy anything but a McPlant? :)

@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente 7 месяцев назад

I don't care about and don't need their McPlant, I would not even step inside, and all similar symbols and accelerators of Speciesm, I would feel as a Speciest traitor. I hope this "scientist", which ignore-d? undoubtedly obvious proves of suffering of his lab animals, and obviously and righteously felt quite uncomfortable and embarrassed by "why not vegan" and mentioned lab animals, will stop his Mengele practice and become AntiSpeciest. He recognises speciest-ically the rights of functionally incapable humans but with "theory" of different scale of consciousness still can't recognize and grant same rights to other species! After watching this I even more prefer AntiSpeciesm over Sentientism, which I feel is not sentient enough about discrimination. not native english speaker, pardon my french :)

@Sentientism 7 месяцев назад

@@AntiSpeciestMarkoValente Thank you for your thoughtful reply - your English is way better than my French! I share your frustration - hopefully our conversation made a tiny contribution to Christof thinking more broadly about the values he already holds. As I mentioned, while Sentientism leaves space for various ways of thinking about different sentient beings - the minimum obligation at the very least should be non-maleficence towards every sentient being. That we wouldn't needlessly exploit, harm or kill them. To my mind sentientism is one way of rejecting speciesism. I suspect we need a combination of anti-speciesism and sentientism because we do need the latter's positive statement about who (sentient beings) matter morally - as well as rejecting speciesist discrimination. Arguably someone could be an "anti-speciesist" by treating humans and dogs just as badly as they treat pigs and fishes. And some might disingenuously claim that discriminating against insentient plant species is "speciesist". Many anti-speciesists also reserve the right to grant differential moral consideration based on differing interests or degrees of sentience - on the basis that their discrimination isn't species-based. Sorry for the long reply - got carried away!

@nickknowles8402 2 месяца назад

O good he has another book

@backwardthoughts1022 2 месяца назад

here hes still a physicalist. (dec 2023) now in interviews from a month ago (april 2024) he explicitly abandons it.

@Sentientism 2 месяца назад

Thanks - it's an interesting trajectory!

@Philo-ul2uq 28 дней назад

He spent a lot of time with Daniel Dennett. Dennett spent decades arguing for illusionism while spending the same amount of time denying it.

@backwardthoughts1022 27 дней назад

@@Philo-ul2uq heh...no hes an true illusionist. just not as psychotic as francis crick, who asserted that since colors are emergent properties of rod and cones, if you correctly assembled them in a petridish you would therefore necessarily have colors sitting in a petridish. in a discussion between Chalmers Frankish dennett etc they backed off from such an extreme but natural consequence of their physicalism, whereas the Churchlands who were also there were in accord with crick. it should be noted that in 2023 as still a physicalist in 2023, Koch nevertheless still distinguished between the substrate of awareness and the awareness arising. for about the last ~5yrs he ceased equating the 2. however he was still a physicalist because awareness although not equivalent to the substrate still dependents entirely on it. now in the past couple of months, he has finally matured to the point that the substrate is not necessary for fundamental awareness, though coarser awareness is still royally conditioned by the substrate.

@ridwanjalali9217 Месяц назад

I have heard lots of arguments against religion repeatedly, and some are good ones, but “why dogs don’t get resurrected”, that is a new one.. 😑

@PClanner 7 дней назад

Here is where I cannot agree. Religiosity as a source of morals is a flawed narrative. Consequenently, as we cannot have a dependently and verifiable account of the start of time, we have to take things as we have found them out to be, and modify our thought processes when more information is found out (revealed holds to much supernaturalilty for me). So the stories of heaven, gods, souls and resurrection do not feature in real life. If we follow that to a natural conclusion, everything based on those stories (and as our history was vocal for the longest time) is skewed and is found to be both incompatible and incorrect for the way our society is turning out. But we cannot change because too much would need to change for reality to be observed. Sentience is a flawed descriptor because it cannot be correctly categorized. When we understand HOW a thought is constructed, we could move on the correct meaning, but in it's current form, it is an empty, meaningless word.

@Sentientism 5 дней назад

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Unsurprisingly I find sentience is still be a useful concept even while we remain deeply uncertain about its fundamental nature and the correct philosophy of mind (about which Sentientism as a worldview is neutral as long as we use a naturalistic epistemology to work it out). In common sense terms if someone cuts me - it hurts and I don't like it. That is morally salient regardless of whether my sentience is the primordial grounding of physics, an illusion or simply an evolved class of information processing going on in my nervous system. If we require concepts to be perfectly grounded and crisp before using them we'll have to give up on pretty much all concepts outside of formal systems. We care deeply about those concepts but reality isn't bothered :)

@tim59ism 14 дней назад

The host talks far too much. Also, has some very odd views and assumptions. Why start bringing homophobia (whatever that is) into a conversation about meta physics and existentialism? He also doesn't seem to realise that if there is no intelligence behind the universe, then there is no logical reason for treating each other and animals nicely. We may as well just do what is best for each of us because we won't he here in the blink of a cosmic eye. No one will care when we're dead, what we did, or didn't do and we're really not alive very long. As George Harrison said, it doesn't take long to get from fifteen to fifty. I'm in my sixties, now and it's going faster and faster

@Sentientism 11 дней назад

Hi Tim - thanks for the feedback. My excuse re: talking too much is that I do call these conversations rather than just interviews :). By homophobia I just mean the standard definition - although it's often a hatred, not just a fear. The reason it's relevant is because it can only be justified by broken ethics or broken epistemology - often both, feeding off each other. Ethics and epistemology are what this Sentientism worldview is all about - so they and their implications are of central concern. Personally I don't see how imagining a consciousness behind the universe is that different from recognising that each consciousness, each sentient being, matters in their own right. The key difference is that sentient beings do really seem to exist and I'm yet to be convinced of any supernatural intelligence "behind" the universe. When we watch a film, the value isn't in the rating we give it at the end, it's in every moment of our experience of the film and our shared memories of it. So for me, there is meaning and value in every moment of sentient experience - experienced by every sentient being. I don't need any more than that to feel a rich sense of awe, wonder and also moral responsibility.

@tim59ism 10 дней назад

@@Sentientism Thanks for the reply ! I don't like the term homophobia. A phobia is an irrational fear. Now what I mean by that is... I don't think the term is accurate. There needs to be a term that allows for some people's genuinely held beliefs, although I have no problem personally with people that are attracted to their own sex. Nor should anyone else, IMHO. Now, the other question. No one knows (or can know)if there is an intelligence behind the universe, but based on the many experiences and phenomena I have seen good evidence for, I personally believe there is. If there isn't, then there is actually no point in being nice to each other, we would be better off looking after ourselves and trampling others into the ground, which many do anyway. Humanism is terribly flawed, our lives are ultimately pointless if we are nothing but a tiny cosmic accident in vast empty soup of cold, random matter. Consciousness doesn't arise from the brain, it can't possibly, because matter is a different substance to mind. There can't be a chemical and electrical composition of the thought, "I am jealous of my neighbour's new car" or " I don't like Donald Trump". Consciousness is everything. It's all we have that makes life possible but nerve cells don't produce it, it comes from somewhere else. Best regards !

@Sentientism 9 дней назад

@@tim59ism Thanks Tim - glad you reject discrimination on the basis of people's sexuality - whatever we choose to call that discrimination. I agree "phobia" doesn't quite capture it - I suspect many people aren't really scared but they still discriminate brutally. It's the discrimination not a feeling of fear that's the problem. A tangential question - is your sense that this cosmic intelligence is good, evil or neutral re: the billions of sentient beings living and flourishing and suffering in their universe? I think it's sad to feel that we have to insist on some external intelligence or ultimate scoreboard or some finla reward or punishment for life to be meaningful. For me there is value (whether good or bad) and meaning in every single moment of sentient experience - as experienced by every single sentient being. Sentientism itself is neutral on philosophy of mind so may agree that consciousness is fundamentally different in some way. Personally I think it's most likely a useful way of describing a class of evolved information processing that just happens to feel like this to run. And that feeling (I'm doing OK or not OK) helped us go towards good stuff and away from bad stuff - which is why it evolved in the first place. You might enjoy my conversation with Mark Solms for more on this sort of view.

@tim59ism 9 дней назад

@@Sentientism Thanks again for the reply, just saw it. I don't know and can't imagine (personally) what this intelligence is other than it is obviously unfathomably superior to mine. I don't think it's a man with a beard sitting up somewhere near Jupiter, but I've studied near death experience for decades and spoken to many people that have had them and there does seem to be a consistent meeting with a vastly superior intelligence/beings of some kind, usually described as beings of light, whatever that means. It may sound rather strange but the consistency is there and I don't believe they are hallucinations, although I realise that is challenging to most academics, as their science is based on physicalism, reductionist materialism etc. I don't think life is ultimately meaningless, but I don't think that because meaning can be given arbitrarily, rather I think this life might be some kind of 'task' or 'experience' we need in order to 'progress' or in order to simply experience the opposite of what these people who have these experiences discover, namely complete happiness and perfection (that is what most of them describe). I also have memories of coming here. I can't and wouldn't try to convince you or anyone else about the validity of these memories but I know for myself they are completely authentic. I have been here before and I actually suspect I may have made many of the mistakes I made last time, if you see what I mean, but of course these kind of ideas are utter nonsense in the eyes of mainstream science.

@Sentientism 8 дней назад

@@tim59ism Thank you for your thoughtful and interesting answer.